At last, someone agrees with me about how good Contract Killer is. Woop! 2 meat is also the best number to try avoid singleton IHW’s in hand and the fact it doesn’t require tags means we now have two options for a single scorch flatline (though both require some time/support, fair enough). Fantastic card for Weyland.

I’m not sure Muertos is a 1. I think there is a very competitive forced rez/derez idea around now and someone just needs to crack it (I’m trying my best). Can’t fault the score at time of writing though.

Just hating on the cloud breakers! 1 seems awfully low even if you dislike them. Also 4 on contract killer seems a little off base, I don’t see it anywhere near Marcus Battys level nor see it competing with snatch & grab. I understand it can do 2 meat damage but it just doesn’t seem to be as good as you might think

I feel like this review had some really strong spots but others could’ve used a little more explanation. Cards like Faust and Street Peddler get more thorough reasonings while cards like Geist and Drive-By get blanket statements. Examples: “Forger + Underworld Contacts is really promising” what makes this more promising than Access to GlobalSec + Underworld?; “Unfortunately, I don’t think the Cloud Breakers (Shiv, Spike, Crowbar) are effective or worth building around for the current environment” I’d love to hear why you don’t think they’re effective. This is what I look to read in a set review.

Basically I’d like to see more of the reviews where you delve a little deeper into a card rather than merely rate it.

Parasite bait is the Netrunner answer to the old MTG saying “dies to doom blade”, both of which are complete horseshit - unless, of course, that any Ice rezzed should either be unparasiteable or have an immediate effect on the game that is better than the cost of the Ice (Architect fits both, Lotus fits one, Crick another, etc.). Maybe people should just accept that Eli is OP and that people should not expect better Barriers any time soon.

I think it’s pretty valid to note that a piece of ice is weak to parasite. There’s a reason Komainu and Tsurugi have fallen out of favour, despite both being taxing pieces of ice that punish facechecks.

The important thing is the rez cost compared to how easily the ice dies. Spiderweb, Tsurugi, Komainu are all legitimately weak to parasite - Popup window and Pup are not.

Pachinko is eli, without the bioroid weakness. But getting tags to stick is hard these days…

Sub boost!

EDIT: I’ve brain-brewing a deck (I think it has to wait until SYNC) that uses Sub Boost and these very cost effective cards with sub boost to put on a strong tax. The problem with it currently is that they’re really bad ICE in the early game, whereas Eli is just fine early. Pachinko does 0 without support from another card, and that means you have to build around it a bit.